The dead bolt turned.

Theresa opened the door, and screamed, “Get in!”

Ben rushed into the cell as the first abby launched out of the corridor.

She stepped in, jerked the door closed, and locked it a half second before the abby rammed the bars.

Ben screamed.

As the first abby picked itself up off the floor, its partner crawled out of the hallway.

It was the first time Theresa had seen an abby up close.

The one that had crashed into the cell was huge and covered in gore.

Death emanated off its blood-soaked skin.

Ben’s back was up against the wall, his eyes gone wide, a puddle forming under his feet.

“Can they get us in here?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

When the second abby collided with the bars, the entire structure shook.

Theresa wrapped her arms around Ben as the first abby stood to its full five-and-a-half-foot height.

It cocked its head and watched them through the bars, milky eyes blinking, processing, problem-solving.

“What’s that thing moving inside its chest?” Theresa whispered.

“That’s its heart, Mom.”

“How do you—” Oh. Right. He’d learned about them in school.

The heart beat rapidly, blurred and distorted through the layers of skin, as if Theresa were watching it through several inches of ice.

This one’s legs were short, and standing straight, its arms reached all the way down to the floor. It slid its right arm between the bars—slim but rippled with muscle. It was over four feet long, and Theresa watched in horror as those black talons stretched across the floor of the cell.

“Get away!” she screamed.

The other abby came around the side of the cell and did the same. Its left arm was five feet long and when one of its talons grazed Ben’s shoe, Theresa stomped on its claw.

The abby roared.

Theresa pulled Ben toward the corner farthest away from the bars, where they climbed up onto the metal bed frame.

“Are we going to die, Mom?”

“No.”

Three new abbies emerged from the corridor and broke for the cell, screeching and hissing. There were more behind them, the noise in the room growing and growing.

Soon there were fifteen arms reaching through the bars, and more abbies hurling themselves at the cell.

Theresa sank down onto the bare mattress and held Ben tightly in her arms.

The light coming through the window had changed from blue to purple, the room becoming steadily darker.

She put her lips to Ben’s ear and said over the noise of the monsters, “Think about another place, another time.”

Ben trembled in her arms, and still more abbies streamed into the room.

Theresa stared up at that high window as the monsters shook the bars and crashed into them and reached their hideously long arms into the cell.